BRUSH PRAIRIE––The Battle Ground Tigers secured a trip to the 4A State Volleyball tournament next week in Kennewick with a three set win over Skyline from King County at Prairie High School.
After taking care of the Spartans, they looked forward to a return to State–this time with the experience of having been there before.
“Last year was definitely a little shell-shocking for us,” said senior co-captain Ashley Watkins who had 20 assists and 11 kills in the victory. “This year I think we’re going to work hard in practice in the week leading up. We know what’s coming, so we’re going to try to use that.”
After a season of hitting benchmarks along the way, the Tigers are ready to make a run at a state title.
“There was a lot of stuff going between us and state,” Watkins said. “We had to win league, win districts, win a crossover. Us getting there, it’s going to be exciting.”
Although they vanquished the Spartans in straight sets, it wasn’t a match without suspense.
In the words of head coach Cheyanne Knight the Tigers “came out firing” in a dominant fourth set.
“We knew we were going to need to swing and be aggressive to get them out of their system,” Knight said. “it’s nice playing teams in our league that haven’t seen our hitters before because we can really mix it up.”
But the second set was a more complicated affair. The Tigers fell behind 3-0 early, setting up a tight affair that ended up deciding the rest of the game.
The Tigers tied it at 14. Then they tied it at 19 before taking a 24-22 lead, only to have the Spartans force a tiebreaker.
The 2nd set was an example of one of the lone faults for this Battle Ground team and what they have to guard against heading into next weekend’s tournament.
“We keep talking about our focus and we need to stop losing focus, because that’s what happens,” Knight said. “Really it’s our mental game that will stop us from reaching the finals at state, not our talent.”
“We lost a little bit of focus going into it,” Watkins said about the second set. “Afterwards we definitely tried hard and we said, ‘whatever happens happens, nothing is going to get between us and this set.”
After flighting through that set, the Tigers were back to being the dominant team that blew Skyline away in the first set.
“Last year was really exciting for us because we hadn’t been since ’89 and we really didn’t know what to expect,” Knight said. “We know the caliber of the teams and we know we’ll be right there with them.”
The 4A and 3A State Volleyball tournament begins Nov. 13 at the Toyota Center in Kennewick.
BATTLE GROUND 3, SKYLINE 0
25-14, 26-24, 25-13
Highlights –– Brooke VanSickle 20 kills, 16 assists; Ashley Watkins 20 assists, 11 kills; Autumn Mayo 8 kills; Nattali Baiar 4 blocks, 9 digs; Kimberly Lesley 2 aces; Hana Wyles 17 digs.
